Little Quick began developing another series last year called Sixes & Sevens with Leah Mallen of the great documentary Coast Modern as well as our little Foggy film. We've paused in development to take care of some new Windy business. These aprons were part of the project.

The Sixes & Sevens dolls are in storage, so I used the sweater pigs as models. If you'd like to make one, you can use this template. I used pieces of an old sweater rather a glove.

I discovered a few things while we (really, entirely my husband, master of duct tape, card board and sharpies) made the yellow tractor trailer costume requested by our wee Augs:

1. Use acrylic paint when painting a carboard box. This will let it withstand at least 10–15 minutes of rain . Acrylic is water soluble and non-toxic. Once dry, it becomes very unwashable, though.

2. If painting a kraft/brown cardboard box, paint a thin layer of white paint first. Gouache or acrylic work fine.

3. You can find loads of great truck costume supplies in the bicycle section of a dollar store, especially reflectors and flashing safety lights. We did a bicycle light for the tail-lights and two pen flashlights for the headlights (duct taped behind holes).

4. Even though it doesn't look quite as nice, glue the bottom of the wheels flush with the bottom of the box: that way it is easy to take off and set down.

5. We criss crossed the straps over the back and hand-sewed them down, this was helpful. Beg or bribe or heavily distract your child to stand very still while you get the strap length really well-figured out, it's worth it.

Snufkin, the vagabond and philosopher, arrives each spring to Moominvalley to set up camp, fish, and comfort the small creatures of Moominvalley. He is always wearing a green hat, sometimes decorated with flowers and sometimes with feathers.

and this construct a city (this one is meant to be for collage, but we painted and scribbled them)

There are also some really great projects that we haven't yet tried, like the à la manière de section, with projects inspired by the work of artists like David Hockney or Sonia Delaunay. I think the David Hockney one is perfect for July, and I will put in a little translation here (find the original project here). Observe water (in your bath, swimming pool, by the sea or edge of a lake...), in the style of painter David Hockney. Have fun trying to reproduce the waves, the reflections, the colour of the water. To do this, use watered-down paint, sponges, tissues and different papers. Look carefully at this painting of a swimming pool (below, left)

Ooh, ok, I think this is a pretty good one. We found a video on youtube called Jim Henson on Making Muppets, 1969, from Iowa Public Television. Jim Henson shows children how to make puppets from household objects like socks, potatoes, spoons and tennis balls. It is great!

Augs and I watched it together and then gathered up some materials and made a handful of puppets and little movies.

The dish mop lion, Auggie was very excited to make a pink scarf for the lion because "he was cold".

Wooden spoon puppet.

The pineapple bird. I put on the eyes and Auggie did the nose with a sharpie. By the way, he was horrified by the feeling of his finger in the potato, so we poked a pencil in the bottom and he could hold that instead. I don't have a picture, though — this is my finger. The pineapple bird is the only one who received a name from the Augs, he is special.

I had a bunch of yarn and old knitting swatches out, so these plastic spoon guys have scraps of yarn and a knitting swatch taped on as hair (or hat?). I cut out circles and rectangles out of sticky labels from my studio and gave them to Augs for the faces to colour and place. He was incredibly careful about placing them evenly on the face — he really likes some things to be straight and even. This is an aside, but I was very slightly concerned about how careful he is with crafts, as I don't want him to feel pressured while he makes things — however, yesterday he created a new technique of covering his hands in different colours of ink, yelling "sputz, sputz, sputz" (and also, "look at my fancy nails") and making crazy fingerprint paintings, so I think he's not turning into too much of a perfectionist and it's all ok. Phew.

My favourite part of this guy are the pieces of tape Auggie put over each eye — they are "goggles". Ha!

I've been banging on and on about how great it is that spring is here and summer is coming and meanwhile it turns out that Auggie's favourite season is the autumn. His main reasons are the leaves and our autumn birdfeeder.

We did spend a lot of time this past fall looking at leaves and one windy afternoon we watched hundreds of bright yellow leaves blow off the trees outside our living room window in big gusts. It made more of an impression than I realized. So we used some leaf-shaped cookie cutters to make autumn leaves and we're also up to page 87 of Moominvalley in November — to be honest I am surprised, it's a pretty low-key storyline, but he requests it every few days.

This is a good feeling!

Update: I am just using store-bought play-doh — there are only so many hours in a day sometimes —but if you want to make your own, here is a whole web site devoted just to play dough recipes, so whatever you have handy in your kitchen, I expect you can find a recipe there to suit you.

Here's a version of the shoebox guitar activity (instructions at link) from Sunny. We used a sturdy little giftbox and some paper straws. Auggie had some trouble with the elastic bands so I did that for him, and I cut out the hole with an exacto knife. I think within a year he could tackle this project on his own with safety scissors, but not today. He really loves colouring on black paper so lucky for us we had a black gift box in the closet.

We had an impromptu drawing, painting, egg dying session before dinner with plain store-bought dye, nothing fancy. It was so fun, although, inspired by egg-and-spoon races, very few eggs survived us. Only these brave three.

This summer we visited an exhibition of Lee Ufan (Marking Infinity). It was very relaxing. I loved the rocks on cushions (Relatum) and the repetitive paintings and prints. If you are interested in this type of thing, you can find out a bit more about the movement that Lee was a part of, Mono-ha, and see a video about Ufan here. Mono-ha may translate to "the school of things". This is apparently not a very good translation, but I like it. It seems very vague and inclusive. I feel like I belong to the school of things.

Anyway, I came across our tickets from the exhibition while I was tidying my paperwork today and we decided to do some Ufan-inspired paintings at the kitchen table with the Augs. We used brushes and q tips. Auggie improvised by drawing suns over top and running a toy crane through the paint, wheel painting-style.

It was fun. And then we cut our paper up (it was thick watercolour paper) and used some for birthday cards.

A few weeks ago we discovered birdhouses in some of the large trees around our neighbourhood. As the leaves fall from the trees, they have begun to show themselves. This has really captured the imagination of one of our junior members, and birdhouses are now on the charts (just behind trucks, snow and slightly ahead of fish).

So this week, we visited our local Wildbirds Unlimited shop to find out more about feeding wild birds in our neighbourhood. We got an enormous tub of birdseed and a bird feeder (more on that another time). The tub was the smallest amount available, but at $5, it's been giving us a lot of entertainment. This week, we make a simple 5-minute birdfeeder and hang it on some trees).

One thing we've done is to make little bird feeders out of peanut butter, empty paper towel rolls — cut into pieces — and our birdseed. We found the idea through our pinterest (originally from The Moffatt Girls) and set to work. We used a butter knife to spread peanut butter around the roll, then we rolled it in a plateful of birdseed.

It took us about 15 minutes, and we had a lot of fun vacuuming afterwards (we actually did really have fun with that bit, but that may be just us).

Then we set out to place our feeders on some low branches. We slipped them over some branches near the birdhouses. We used a path we cross at least once a day, so we can keep an eye on them and throw them away when they're empty.

Lastly, we scattered big handfuls of birdseed under the trees on our way home. Probably that was the most fun part of all.

Last week we took a copy of Leo Lionni's It's Mine out of the library, published by Dragonfly Books. The book is about "three selfish frogs [who] bicker all day long. A bad storm and a big brown toad help them realize that sharing is much more fun". The book comes with a craft idea called make your own toad.

Here is photo workbook of a simplified version made with felt and googly eyes. We made three frogs: Milton, Rupert, and Lydia, and the kindly big brown toad. To make a frog, you will need: rocks, paint, googly eyes or buttons, felt or construction paper, children's glue and scissors.

We started with some rocks and washable poster paint.

While the 3 frog rocks were drying we came across a perfectly toad-shaped rock. He was already brown, so we didn't paint him.

Next, we glued on some googly eyes, using children's craft glue.

Then we cut out felt arms (skinny rectangle with one slit cut at the ends) and legs (thicker rectangle with two slits at the ends, then pulled apart a little) and a lily pad.

Then we glued on the legs and placed each frog and toad on a lily pad.

Simple shapes with pre-cut holes that your little one can use by sewing around the edges (this isn't a practical sewing project). This activity was originally inspired by a 5-year old boy I spoke to. His kindergarten class has a wooden sewing set which is very popular with the children. Here are instructions and templates so you can make your own sewing set.

This is great for the 3-5 set and is a surprisingly easy craft project to set up.

1. Print out one of our templates.
2. Trace shape from template onto some card stock or cardboard. We used the inside of a cereal box.You can also hold the printed template together with the card stock and cut the shape out directly.
3. Use a standard hole punch to make a series of holes around the shape you have cut out.
4. Child may then use a shoelace to sew around the edge. You may also use a thick piece of yarn with some scotch tape rolled around the end for stiffness to mimic a shoelace.

Children can make these to learn about colour. Here is a simple kid's project from Wee folk art to make a yarn colour wheel. You could do the same thing with scraps of paper or fabric, if you don't have yarn at your house.

To make paper dolls, just fold a piece of paper in half lengthwise and cut along the fold, leaving 2 long strips of paper. Then fold one of your strips twice into an accordion fold (so you have 4 panels). Then cut out the shape of robot, making sure not to cut the edge of the arm on the fold. You can use a hole punch to make eyes, or draw them on.

Here is a robot shape (click on image to make it easier to see):

We made some mini-robots out of a scrap of silver paper (using a mini-hole punch for the eyes), too. To make a mini robot, you just fold your initial paper lengthwise twice, cut along the folds, leaving you with 4 long strips of paper. Then take one of the strips and fold it accordion-style into 8 sections. Cut the same shape on the top panel.